Juliet Schor

Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College and is currently serving as the Matina S. Horner Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University. Her PhD is in economics, which she taught at Harvard from 1984 to 1995. Schor is the author of the national best-seller The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure, The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need, and True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy. Her current research topics include consumer culture, sustainable lifestyles, and the relationship between time use and carbon emissions. She is a member of the MacArthur Foundation Connected Learning Research Network for which she is leading a six-year project on the sharing economy.

What is the "sharing economy"? Can it contribute to a more sustainable and equitable future? Juliet Schor answers these questions, arguing that democratizing the ownership of these new platforms will be key to realizing their potential.